Medical stuff...sort of

I am a fan of almost no medications. I find that in almost any case where they are intended to deal with one bodily (or mental) breakdown they may or may not help that one...but they certainly cause problems in multitudes of other areas. Chemotherapy may or may not put cancer in remission...and it is certainly no home run in that regard...but it completely destroys the overall health of the victim taking it. They lose hair, strength, etc., often becoming completely bedridden. (I say "often" but every single person I have personally known who has taken it has become that way. In my own admittedly anecdotal experience the correct word is "always")

It has become a recurring joke amongst stand-up and sketch comedians to go over all the ways side-effects cause problems greater than whatever potential benefits a person receives. Sure, you cure your herpes...but you gain explosive diarrhea, insomnia, and projectile vomiting in return.

I have heard lots of people talk about the benefits of Prozac. But every person I have personally encountered that was taking it has been made moody with a tendency towards violent outbursts of anger while struggling with sleep issues.

And so forth.

This is not to say that there are not benefits to some or perhaps even all of these medications. But it is to say I see a great deal of harm done from medication and very little good.

And now we have perhaps a growing tide of evidence for even something as 'innocuous' as a sleeping pill.

Color me unsurprised. When medication intentionally alters the chemical balances of your system to achieve a result we have demonstrated over and over again that we do not understand human physiology well enough to anticipate how altering that chemical balance will affect other portions of a person's life. I myself experienced the "out of control" aspect when I took a sleep pill for a dentist visit. That entire day of my life is not in my memory banks...yet I rearranged furniture, spoke to my sister on the phone, got a ride home from my brother...and remember none of it.

I believe that pill was helpful (okay 2...or 3...they said I took "boosts" to it but I do not recall that and do not know how many I took) in getting me through something I would not have been able to handle otherwise. I also believe the odds of me ever again taking something that screws up my faculties that badly are slim indeed. And to regularly take a sleep aid that does the same thing to numerous people is, I should think, unwise.

At some point people will realize we still know so little about the human body that many of these pseudo-cures for being human are doing more damage than good. Stop filling kids with medication because the kids have energy (some are called hyper-active and given something to slow them down, some are said to have attention deficit disorder and given something to make them concentrate, etc.) and so forth. Same for adults. We would be a better society if we cut back medications by about 95% and learned sometimes you have to deal with a headache or other inconvenience without resorting to the artificial boosts of medications which, while they sometimes do address that specific problem, almost invariably cause problems in multiple other areas.

This post is not ph balanced for accuracy.